Hard Case Crime - 51 - Killing Castro by Lawrence Block

Author:Lawrence Block
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media LLC
Published: 2010-06-15T04:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

The highway runs from Manzanillo, on the Gulf of Guacanayabo, almost due east to Santiago. Its course is roughly parallel to the southern coasts of Oriente Province, passing through the towns of Bayamo and Jiguani and Palma Soriano before reaching the end of the line. It is a broad, two-lane highway, paved with blacktop but maintained poorly. There are potholes here and there, the asphalt blacktop eroded or gouged out, and an automobile’s tires can take a beating on the road.

The land on either side of the road is rough and hilly. The soil is fertile and the rain plentiful, but this particular area is not good for the raising of sugar cane, the crop that is for Cuba what cotton was for the ante-bellum Southern United States. A little tobacco is grown here and there along the highway. Mostly, the land is given over to small truck-farms, or is abandoned to nature. There are hills, there are valleys, there are dense growths of shrubbery and brush.

There are also rebels.

It was late afternoon. Matt Garth lay flat on his back upon a threadbare army blanket and listened to the train. The train ran a zigzag course from Manzanillo to Glorieta in the east, bypassing Santiago. The train was now perhaps a mile from them, but it could be heard easily through the still air. It was the only sound audible.

Garth yawned and scratched himself. The spics were out somewhere, he thought. Out chasing fleas or something, for God’s sake. He didn’t know how in hell they did it, but every afternoon they went skulking off into the woods, and every night they came back with something to eat—a sack of beans, a pot of rice, a chicken with its neck twisted, a few eggs, once even a young pig taken too soon from its mother. Garth wasn’t too clear on how they managed it, whether they copped the food from farmers who were on their side or whether they just stole it. He didn’t much care.

He lit a cigarette, took two puffs on it and put it out.

He was going crazy, that was the trouble. He was going off his nut, roaming around in the goddamned mountains and eating rice and beans three times a day and waiting for something to happen. The fighting wasn’t bad but they hadn’t had any of that in too long, not since they cooked the six soldiers in the Jeep. Since then it was plenty of rambling, plenty of sleeping outside, plenty of goddamned beans and rice, and nothing else.

Oh, yeah. Plenty of the broad, that Maria, shaking those big tits and that hot ass right in his face, then pulling it all away the minute he got interested. The tease, the damn tease—she was driving him screwy. A girl who tossed it around like that ought to be ready to give some of it away. It would be a little better if she was at least putting out for somebody else. But not her, not that Maria bitch.

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